This blog began in 2007, focusing on anthrax vaccine, and later expanded to other public health and political issues. The blog links to media reports, medical literature, official documents and other materials.

... Martin Friede, PhD, who heads the Technology Transfer Team within the Department on Innovation, Information, Evidence and Research at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, spoke about influenza vaccine adjuvants.
Adjuvants are added to vaccines to improve the immune response. They are known to increase antibody titers; reduce antigen dose (dose sparing for a pandemic); reduce the number of doses needed because they provide more rapid protection; enable immunization in patients with weakened immune systems; provide appropriate bias; and induce cell-mediated immunity, according to Friede.
“They are a critical enabling component for subunit/recombinant vaccines,” he said.
Adjuvants currently approved for global use include aluminum (alum); MF59 (squalene emulsion); AS03 (squalene/tocopherol emulsion); AF3 (squalene emulsion; Virosomes (liposomes)); and polyoxidonium (poly-electrolyte))...

Friede said alum adjuvants are widely used in pediatric vaccines — including DTP, Hepatitis B virus and pneumococcal vaccines — because they enhance titers and they have a long record of safety.
The drawback with alum adjuvants is that they are not really suitable for yearly administration because the adjuvant effect is dependent on many factors, according to Friede. He added that there are challenges that are specific for influenza, including that the antigens are variable and that the benefit for influenza vaccines is not convincing.
“Each year, the influenza antigen with aluminum changes and it is very different to make it consistent,” Friede said.
Despite its limitations, there are several influenza vaccines with alum — whole killed virion vaccines and split vaccines — that are approved for use around the world but not in the United States, according to Friede.
Oil-in-water emulsions are simply droplets of oil in water (~100 nm), the most common of which are squalene & tocopherol and tween & lecithin.
The MF59 adjuvant (Novartis) is made from squalene in water with Tween + Span and has been used in influenza vaccines in European countries since 1996. The push toward development of the MF59 adjuvant began with the last emergence of H5N1 because it required an enormously large dose of antigens needed to get an immune response.
“However, the moment you add oil and water, the immune results were enhanced enormously,” Friede said.
In 2009, when MF59 was incorporated into the 2009 H1N1 pandemic vaccine, it increased global vaccine production capacity to more than 200 million doses distributed for all ages.

The caveat is that there is an increase in local reactogenicity, according to Friede. (And what about systemic reactogenicity?--Nass)

“You cannot have an omelet without breaking the eggs,” Friede said. “The influenza vaccine with this adjuvant often results in some local site reactions and some redness, but it’s nothing serious...”

“I would say to stay tuned because you may have an influenza vaccine with this adjuvant available in your country soon,” Fried said.

After swimming with dolphins at Key Largo, they checked me out at the edge of the pool

Visiting a Bhutanese Dzong, the regional seat of both government and religion (and a fort for good measure)

Why am I blogging?

Because life is meant to be lived! The left side of this blog has photos of some peak experiences. And the right side contains information about which I am passionate.

Too many peoples' lives are characterized by lack of authenticity, and fear of acknowledging and expressing their true nature. Employees cannot say what they think at work, and in the corporate system we must squish ourselves into square holes when we are round pegs. We thus lose touch with our souls, becoming cogs in a soulless, profit-driven machine.

The culture of political correctness has meant, in medicine, that we ignore how the foundations of our science are being undermined by commercialism. Clinical data generated or presented by the manufacturers of drugs, vaccines and devices cannot be trusted: there are hundreds of studies proving this. But this fraudulent information continues to be the only data informing the approval of vaccines, drugs and devices.

Unless scrupulous ethical conduct is demanded of physicians and biological scientists, our lack of meaningful standards will carry the medical-pharmaceutical system down the path of increasing irrelevance.

Medicine and its tools need to be affordable. The current medical-industrial milieu, characterized by contempt for science, countless ways for insiders to achieve wealth due to failure of good governance, and regulatory agency-to-industry revolving doors, has ushered in stratospheric pricing... further kicking us down that path to irrelevance.

Why is our new health care plan a giveaway to health industries instead of to health consumers? Why won't it cover all Americans? Why was the "public option" never an option for the Obama administration? Why did the promised Trump health plan evaporate the moment he was elected?

So many of our leaders carry a heavy burden of mendacity and avarice. If they instead got in touch with their own souls (perhaps by exposure to the natural world), or made their decisions by maximizing the amount of good that results, our leaders might find real meaning and value in their lives.

Until that happens, the only way to straighten out the current mess is to demand accountability and impose penalties on unethical/dishonest leaders. Both political parties enjoy bounteous hors d'oeuvres from Pharma's table, making it unlikely the existing political "process" will provide relief--as we've seen in the demoralizing healthcare reform drama.

Until then, I'll continue to "call it as I see it" in this blog -- working and living the way life should be, in rural Maine, far from the centers of power.

Ellen Byrne has created several designs encapsulating aspects of the FBI's ridiculous case against Bruce Ivins. They can be purchased on T-shirts and coffee mugs. All proceeds will be donated to the the Frederick County chapter of the American Red Cross, a favored charity of Dr. Bruce Ivins.